A 3D mesh is made up of one or more polygons that define a surface, such as a terrain. The number of polygons in the 3D mesh may be increased, resulting in increased resolution, or decreased, resulting in decreased resolution. Increasing the number of polygons in the 3D mesh increases the resolution of the surface by making the surface more detailed and decreasing the number of polygons in the 3D mesh decreases the resolution of the surface by making the surface less detailed.
Decreasing the resolution of the surface can increase rendering performance, particularly on low-end hardware. That is, since there are fewer polygons to process, the 3D mesh can be manipulated using a less powerful graphics processor and/or using fewer processor cycles. This could also relate to a node graph defined by a 3D mesh.